New York, NY — Recently, CNBC highlighted migrants and asylum seekers’ countless and significantly positive impacts on the U.S. economy and how they are a solution to challenges the American economy may face.
“The data and numbers couldn’t make it more clear: Immigrants are fueling the American economy. Our leaders in New York City, Albany, and D.C. must face this reality and better support migrants and asylum seekers by expanding access to work authorization and providing funding for legal services and other community services,” said Murad Awawdeh, Executive Director, New York Immigration Coalition.
As the story on CNBC points out, immigrants directly support the growth of the nation’s population and labor force, which “are key components of a healthy economy and the nation’s ability to pay its bills,” according to economists. When more migrants work, that means “more people paying income tax” and migrants bolstering “tax revenues at a time of growing U.S. budget deficits,” and directly benefiting “social programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which are funded by payroll taxes and facing a shortfall.”
A study from researchers from top universities emphasized the outsized boon that immigrants are for job creation and “found immigrants in the U.S. workforce to be ‘substantial job creators’ with an 80 percent higher ‘entrance rate into entrepreneurship’ compared with native-born individuals.”
At a time when America’s native-born population is aging and experiencing lower birth rates, migrants and asylum seekers address the challenges of the U.S. workforce and have already been “a net benefit for the economy…” said Jack Malde, senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Read highlights from the article below:
CNBC: Immigration is ‘taking pressure off’ the job market and U.S. economy, expert says
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The share of immigrants in the U.S. labor force has steadily increased for more than a decade, and that growth is poised to continue — a trend economists say benefits the American workforce and economy.
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Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said the increase in foreign-born workers is “taking pressure off the economy.”
“In fact, it’s probably one reason why the economy grew so strongly last year,” he said.
U.S. gross domestic product, a measure of economic output, grew by 2.5% in 2023, beating expectations and increasing from 1.9% in 2022.
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A growing population and labor force are key components of a healthy economy and the nation’s ability to pay its bills, economists said.
In simple terms, more workers generate more goods and services. A larger number of people earning paychecks means more consumer spending, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. More people paying income tax on earnings boosts tax revenues at a time of growing U.S. budget deficits, and helps prop up social programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which are funded by payroll taxes and facing a shortfall.
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The problem is that native-born U.S. households are having fewer children and the baby boom generation is aging out of the job market, economists said. Absent immigration, such dynamics would cause a long-term shrinking of the U.S. population and labor force, while social programs would require greater tax revenue to support more retiring seniors.
The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, a nonpartisan federal agency, predicts U.S. deaths will exceed births starting in 2040, at which point immigration will account for all population growth.
“When you just consider the native-born population, we’re seeing very little labor force growth because of the aging population and low birth rates,” said Jack Malde, senior policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
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The CBO estimates the U.S. labor force will grow by 5.2 million people from 2023 to 2034, largely due to “a surge in immigration” that began in 2022 and will continue through 2026. As a result, gross domestic product will be about $7 trillion higher and revenues $1 trillion larger than they would have been otherwise, it said.
“More workers means more output, more income, and that in turn leads to the higher revenue,” Phillip Swagel, CBO director, said of those projections during a House hearing in February.
Immigrant workers have also helped put downward pressure on pandemic-era inflation by easing a shortage of workers, economists said.
